Optimal mission abort policy for systems subject to random shocks based on virtual age process

•Characterizing the impact of shocks on system failure behavior via random virtual age increments in normal and defective stages.•Developing a duration-based mission abort policy based on the two-stage failure process.•Analytically deriving mission success probability and system survivability under the proposed stochastic failure process and mission abort policy.•Investigating the optimal mission abort policy balancing the tradeoff between mission success probability.